Governor Emilio González Márquez has some explaining to do. The Jalisco state congress voted 20-0, with 15 abstentions, to summon the governor to appear in congress to explain his projected budget for 2011.
The case is this: Last year's final budget had an extra sum of 10 billion pesos of income that had not been linked to concrete budgeted expenditures. That means in practice that the governor had a bunch of extra money available that nobody knows how or where was spent, according to PRD legislator Raúl Vargas López.
This is quite troubling. The governor has been known in the past to have tried on several occasion to shower public money on the church and dubious private interests, with little accountability or even in direct breach of the law. Moreover, Jalisco is struggling with funds shortages for everything from underfunded education to medical facilities, and it now appears the governor for the previous year drastically underestimated the state's income, which allowed him to use the surplus as he saw fit.
Emilio González Márquez, a foul-mouthed alcoholic, is a gift that keeps on giving, and I predict his government will come tumbling down far before his term is due, either due to his impeachment, or through new scandals yet to see the light of day. He will now legally have to appear before the state congress to explain this discrepancy, which quite likely is only the tip of the iceberg regarding the financial irregularities of his administration that will eventually be uncovered.
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